AACC Leadership takes on SYCL in Laboratory Medicine Family Feud

It was a session for the ages, or rather, between the ages. On Tuesday afternoon, the innovative session formats at the 69th AACC Annual Scientific Annual Meeting continued with a Family Feud-style game show.

Paul Jannetto, PhD, hosted the game between AACC leadership—represented by Dennis Dietzen, PhD, Anthony Killeen, MD, PhD, Patricia Jones, PhD, Linnea Baudhuin, PhD, and Michael Bennett, PhD—and the Society for Young Clinical Laboratorians (SYCL)—represented by Nichole Korpi-Steiner, PhD, Deborah French, PhD, Steven Cotten, PhD, Jeff Meeusen, PhD, and T. Scott Isbell, PhD. Jannetto conducted the session in true Family Feud TV game show fashion, using answers to a series of laboratory medicine-themed questions surveyed from AACC members prior to the session. How did it go? Well, it depends on whom you ask.

Dr. Chambliss: The SYCL Perspective

Jannetto opened the first round by asking the players to name an outdated laboratory test. So it is safe to say this game was biased toward the old folks from the start. Fortunately, SYCL members came through with great answers such as RBC folate and CK-MB to win the round. However, the game did not go SYCL’s way from there, mostly attributable to the questionable survey answers for the remaining questions. Which AACC members out there named vitamin D as an important analyte to monitor in ICU patients, anyway?

It also seemed a bit suspicious to have Baudhuin, a geneticist, up for the leadership team for the one molecular question. Down 200 points after the first round, SYCL had some catching up to do going into “Fast Money.” Dietzen and Cotten went head-to-head in a one-minute lightning round of 10 questions.

Here’s another educational tip for both sides: when asked, “what is the most abundant extracellular anion?” sodium—a cation—is not an appropriate answer. In the end, the AACC leadership held their own and won the game. However, it looks like we all may need to go back and hit the textbooks.

Dr. Kellogg: A More Sophisticated Perspective

AACC Leadership demonstrated mastery of the material, schooling the SYCL team on essential laboratory medicine knowledge. But this wasn’t an old-versus-young exercise: Rather, the experienced and sophisticated versus the young and brash.

Team SYCL was so confident they took a congratulatory group selfie before the competition. Wearing hats, leadership quickly started to mislead team SYCL, who apparently thought Leadership was attempting to keep knowledge stuffed in their skulls. Jannetto, as host, also appeared to be involved in the psychological warfare, inviting team SYCL to “come on down” at one point. This was either his forgetting which show he was hosting, or a devious slip designed to further weaken SYCL with confusion.

SYCL leader Nichole Korpi-Steiner started her team off strong, picking CK-MB as an obsolete test, and the team easily listed three more...but couldn’t get the final fifth answer. Unfortunately, neither did leadership, giving round one to SYCL. Team SYCL almost pulled off a clean sweep of round two until French failed to deliver with fecal occult blood as an answer. Leadership correctly guessed strep testing, taking the round.

Although AACC leadership gave SYCL several chances to steal, rounds 3-5 went to leadership. Interviews with departing audience members showed a consensus that the Feud was a great success and something that should appear at future AACC Annual Scientific Meetings.